Word: finleyism
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...Philadelphia silk wholesaler, Myerson made his mark in the 1970s at the venerable New York law firm of Webster & Sheffield. But his craving for power and wealth caused constant friction with partners, many of whom were relieved when Myerson was wooed away in 1984 by Finley, Kumble, an aggressive 700-lawyer firm that became synonymous with '80s-style greed...
...late 1987, not long after Myerson emerged as the firm's key partner, Finley collapsed into bankruptcy amid power clashes, soaring salaries and strangling debt. In his vengeful 1990 book, Conduct Unbecoming, former partner Steven Kumble tags Myerson as the main culprit in the breakup, partly because he squandered money. "Harvey is a compulsive spender, and to some degree he can't control it," explains Kumble. Myerson was equally obsessed with his looks. "Harvey had a series of toupees, of different lengths, that looked like old Knute Rockne football helmets," Kumble recalls. "He'd keep changing them and then...
...Myerson decided he could build another Finley-size business overnight. His pal William Simon introduced him to former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who accepted a $500,000 annual draw largely for lending his conservative name to the shingle. Myerson & Kuhn soon boasted 170 lawyers, but the firm had to borrow just to pay its high-profile partners, and Myerson's spending habits worsened the crunch. By 1989 the partnership was in Chapter...
With Wall Street awash in big fees during the past decade, it was no surprise that so many otherwise savvy lawyers kept signing up with Myerson, even after the Finley debacle. The law firms he was associated with are symbolic of what New York University law ethics professor Stephen Gillers calls "the new disloyalty," which swept the profession in the '80s. "Harvey has to be pathological to have told so many lies so constantly," says former law partner Leon Marcus. "He was always trying to prove he was bigger and better than everyone else. But I wish they didn...
...John H. Finley...